Messy Lab
by lies-d
Summary: Oneshot story about Jumba and Dr. Hamsterviel's former partnership.  Nonslash, kind of obviously.


Author's note: This is a short, drabble-ish thing I've had hanging around my harddrive for awhile. It's been so long since I've seen Lilo and Stitch that I don't know if any of this contradict canon or not.

Messy Lab

Their lab was a mess. They'd scraped a significant amount of cash together from many varied inter-planetary grants – pharmaceutical developments, ecological studies, even a few military contracts. Simple things for any high-grade scientists such as themselves to demand and receive. Millions of credits – stolen. Embezzled. Taken here, to a remote galaxy in the Tarkan drifting colonies, to continue on with their own work, their own projects.

Only one lab assistant between them both, the soiled test-tubes and petrie dished piled up quickly.

Their lab was fabulously outfitted. The latest in DNA-RNA manipulation devices, genetic identifier software upgraded to inter-galactic federation standards, and an implement of tools that only a scientist of the Zeriadian Conglomerate might ask for. For the price of a couple of their super-containment beakers they might have been able to afford a small apartment nearby, someplace with a carpet and a soft bed. But that of course would mean a few less containment beakers.

In the corner of their lab they slept, in a small room originally designated for cleaning supplies. Sometimes concurrently, sometimes alternately, very often sparsely, and always sporadically.

There was a large makeshift hammock stretched across this room. It was sized to fit Jumba, although Rupert could of course fit in its cloth folds when he wished.

On the nights through which they both slept, after particularly long hours of intensive study and experimentation, Jumba dozed with Rupert curled on his stomach, tossing and turning fitfully in his sleep; mumbling, cursing, weeping. Jumba sometimes watched him. Though Rupert wasn't aware, his tiny red eyes would remain half open and frantic. There was no comforting him without waking him up, so Jumba never did. Rupert usually needed the sleep, after the long hours that they'd worked. They never spoke of it.

Dr. Rupert Hamsterviel was a scientist of extraordinary vision. He would sit and recount to Jumba the things he'd seen with his mind's eye – great machines of destruction beyond Jumba's wildest dreams. Gradually, piece by piece, Jumba could see them too. The work they were doing was even now starting to plant the seeds of inspiration in Jumba's own mind, although his ideas were nowhere near as grand yet.

"Think bigger! _Bigger!!_" Rupert was always saying. Nobody had ever told him that before, and Jumba was slowly learning the principle well. Rupert could make him believe that he could fly without wings.

Rupert's greatest fault was that he hated having to sit down and work through the small, yet oh-so-imperative details of his expansive ideas. His patience wore thin so easily and if left to his own devices he would never have been able bring his own plans to fruition. For these few years of his life he never needed to worry about having to do it by himself – he had Jumba to help him.

Together they brought to life extraordinary things which could never have been accomplished alone.

It was the first time in his life that Jumba had ever really been free. Free from his oppressive planet and the painful memories of his failed marriage. Free from inter-planetary law, which was, as he was beginning to find, a slow and stupidly bureaucratic institution. Free from the very laws of physics, it seemed, as he and Rupert broke and redefined them at will. They were both young and incredibly bold, and this was a very exciting time for both of them. Jumba found it easy to be happy there, but for Rupert it seemed the state of happiness was anathema to his very nature.

"Shhhh. . ." Jumba would tell him at night, trying to comfort Rupert in his restless slumber. Rupert would wake screaming if he even tried to touch him, but Jumba kept his hands cupped just around him all the same, as though to ward off the ghosts that plagued the tiny creature.

"Shhh. . ." Jumba would tell him soothingly, if one of their experiments failed and Rupert inevitably fell into one of his fits. Jumba himself had an instinctively destructive nature, but he'd learned over the years that if he was going to vent his anger on inanimate objects, he should do it on something that wasn't important to him, or better yet, something that would survive the assault. Rupert wouldn't calm down until he'd broken something very expensive.

Rupert hailed from a race twice as small as the smallest inter-galactic standard size. A race that still had yet to accomplish anything remotely significant in any scientific or sociological capacity. A tiny race – overlookable.

Rupert hated everything that was bigger than him. He hated people. He hated planets. He hated every ship and station he'd ever set foot upon. He hated the galactic council. He hated the universe.

Jumba supposed, later, that it shouldn't have come as such a surprise when Rupert grew to hate him as well. It did though.

It was an accident, on both of their parts. Rupert added one drop too many to the chemicals they were mixing, and Jumba knew even before the smell hit what the consequences would be. By pure instinct he grabbed Rupert and dove behind the nearest reinforced wall just before the room exploded.

"Little one! Wake up, little one!" Rupert was lying so still in his hands that Jumba had panicked. The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. When Rupert's tiny red eyes finally opened Jumba's heart lifted, only to be skewered by that terrible glare.

The lab could be rebuilt. Whatever fragile relationship they'd had was shattered beyond repair. After a few more months of disastrous fall-out, there was nothing left for Jumba to do but leave Rupert alone in his mad quest for destruction – that of the federation, the universe, and ultimately, Jumba realized, himself.

Looking back, Jumba found himself hard-pressed to describe, in his own mind, what it was that had kept them together during those years. Not friendship, really, or partnership – although that was the word he used when asked, he always thought it much too cold and professional. Not kinship, or even rivalry.

He couldn't even describe his reaction to what has happened, thinking of it rarely as he did. Was that sadness? Anger? Or was it pride, and a strange sort of satisfaction?

It was a measure of space and time in the universe that they had shared. A connection. It had existed, and then existed no more.

Jumba remembered, even if Rupert never did.


End file.
